


Residual Stress

by morningshadows



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 05:06:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17636489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningshadows/pseuds/morningshadows
Summary: For a handful of blissful seconds, all Nate registers is the hangover haze and the stench of alcohol and cheap cologne. He gags a little, turning to bury his face in the pillow. Wills himself to keep whatever alcohol that’s in his stomach down instead of letting it make a return visit. That’s when the pain hits him.





	Residual Stress

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a prompt from the FFA Prompt & Fill Fest. I only got through the hurt part of the hurt/comfort before it started to get very long, but I will finish the comfort at some point.

 

 

There’s a stranger on top of him, pushing his face down into the pillow hard enough that Nate can hardly breathe, pushing into him rough and fast. Not enough prep (he’s not even sure there’s been any), not enough lube, it burns, it _hurts_ , but there’s not even enough air for Nate to make a sound louder than a whimper that’s immediately muffled by the pillow.

 

The man’s groan of, “Fuck, yeah, baby, that’s it,” reaches his ears over the sound of his own pounding heart. One hand on the back of Nate’s head, the other gripping Nate’s hip so hard that it hurts, keeping him in place so that Nate can’t get away. Not that he can. His hands are behind his back – tied? Maybe? There’s a half memory of him reaching out for his phone and someone grabbing his wrist, pinning it behind his back.

 

Time slips away from him, and what he does register is little more than a blur of pain and that voice, punctuated by grunts.

 

Eventually, the man’s nails dig into his scalp as he grabs at Nate’s hair, pulling hard, pulling Nate’s face away from the pillow.  Nate gasps, trying to twist to one side. It doesn’t help, but at least now he can breathe, choking on every gasp as the room tilts dangerously to one side. He’s going to be sick, he’s going to be sick, he’s going to be sick.

 

“Fuck, that’s it, tighten up for me, baby.”

 

“Stop,” he manages before he’s stopped from saying more as his stomach churns. It sounds slurred to his own ears.

 

The man ignores him, saying, “Arch your back,”

 

And Nate does even though he doesn’t want to, scalp burning. He’s not sure if he’s crying or if his eyes are watering from the pain. Maybe it’s both.

 

“Yeah, just like that, you’re fucking gorgeous.”

 

Nate’s not sure how long it goes on for. He’s not sure when he bites his lip. He focuses on the smear of blood on the pillow, the taste of blood in his mouth, anything but the pain, anything but the way it feels like he’s being torn open every time the man thrusts into him.

 

He’s not sure how long it takes before the stranger lets go of his hair, lets him fall facedown on the bed again, gasping into the pillow as the man collapses on top of him, groaning as he sinks his teeth into Nate’s shoulder, his hips stuttering against Nate’s ass as he comes.

 

Then there’s only darkness.

 

-

 

For a handful of blissful seconds, all Nate registers is the hangover haze and the stench of alcohol and cheap cologne. He gags a little, turning to bury his face in the pillow. Wills himself to keep whatever alcohol that’s in his stomach down instead of letting it make a return visit.

 

That’s when the pain hits him. His shoulders. His knees. The back of his head. His wrists. He smells the blood on the pillow. Feels the nauseating sting.

 

On the table beside his bed, his phone vibrates and plays _All Along the Watchtower_. Mick. Moving as little as possible, Nate grabs the phone but doesn’t answer it. He lets it ring out and checks the missed calls as soon as Mick’s photo (taken when he wasn’t paying attention) disappears. A dozen from Mick and seven from Ava. His last outgoing calls are to them.

 

He’d called Mick at the Time Bureau’s Christmas party. Nate remembers that much. Or, rather, he remembers calling Mick and then ordering a drink. It wasn’t his first. Then…

 

Then there’s almost nothing, until that guy. Whatever happened between that drink and then scares Nate too much for him to think about it. He doesn’t remember meeting him, but he remembers knocking a bottle over, it smashing on the floor, someone’s hand on his arm.

 

He doesn’t remember coming back to his apartment.

 

Nate sits up slowly, wincing at the pull across his shoulders. His wrists have been rubbed raw by what he thinks is his own belt. There are bruises there, too. Finger-shaped and almost purple.

 

The phone starts to ring again – Ava this time – and Nate shoves it under the pillow and gets to his feet slowly. It’s a mistake. Everything hurts a hundred times more like this.

 

-

 

Nate’s not sure if it’s the sight of the condom hanging over the edge of the trash can in the bathroom that finally makes him throw up, or if his hangover finally gets the better of him. It’s easy to fall into the usual hangover routine: vomit, rinse his mouth, brush his teeth, wash his face.

 

Then Nate catches sight of his own reflection. His lower lip is bloody and swollen, cut in two places by his own teeth. There’s a smear of blood on his chin. A hand-shaped bruise on his left hip. Another on one side of his jaw. His wrists look even worse in his reflection than they do when he looks at them.

 

His eyes are wide and wet, like Nate’s halfway to crying, and maybe he is, but he’s not sure what he’ll do if he does start crying. If he thinks about this too much.

 

He switches on the shower and begins to wash instead of waiting for the tub to fill. Nate can smell that cologne on him. It feels like it’s everywhere, soaking into his skin, staining him. He scrubs and scrubs, with water that’s really too hot to be using, until he’s sure that he can’t smell the alcohol or the cologne or the smoke or the sweat on his own skin, washes his hair three times just to make sure (he touches a tender spot on his scalp, where his hair was pulled, and lets out a sob before he can stop himself.) Then it’s finally time to turn the taps on as hard as they can go, throwing in all the fancy washes that he’s accumulated as apartment-warming gifts, because apparently everyone on the Waverider only knows how to give people houseplants or toiletries.

 

It takes Nate a while to work up the courage to check the damage, until the water is halfway up his calves, lifting one foot to the edge of the bathtub so that he can reach back with slick fingers and carefully check himself for any bleeding. It hurts like hell, and there’s a horrible warm wetness that Nate hopes is just the remains of what little lube was used, but there’s no blood on his fingers.

 

The shame curls in the pit of his gut.

 

A clinic, he’ll need to find a clinic, too, since he doesn’t know if that guy used a condom the entire time, and he doesn’t want this connected to his name. Nate’s got plenty of fake identification from his time on the Waverider. That won’t be too difficult.

 

The other mirror gives Nate too good a view of the bite mark on his shoulder—he’s going to need to clean that up; it’s deep enough to get infected. It’s the kind of thing that Gideon annoys you about until you let her fix it on the Waverider. The Waverider. He could go there, sneak on while everybody’s busy, no one would even have to know… Gideon would keep it a secret if Nate asks her to, he’s positive she would. But someone could come back, or Zari could see Gideon’s records while she’s working on the ship.

 

No. He picks up a washcloth and scrubs at the bite until it’s bleeding again, until it’s stinging so much that his eyes are watering. None of them can ever know that he – that he had a bad hook-up. A bad hook-up that would have gone a lot better, or a lot less worse, if he hadn’t been so stupid. If he hadn’t been so drunk that he’d left with a stranger. If he hadn’t been so drunk and dehydrated that he couldn’t even steel up.

 

It’s a bad hook-up, Nate decides as he turns away from the mirror, the bruises taunting him in his peripheral vision. That’s all.

 

-

 

Work is work. It’s not as if the fugitives take time off from existing just because it’s Christmas, and Nate ends up having to go in on Christmas Eve. Nate spends most of the day out in the field, getting in some last-minute training before New Year, and avoiding his dad when Hank drops by the Bureau to check something with Ava.

 

It’s easy enough to cover up the evidence. Most of the bruises are hidden under his clothes, even if there are a few times that Nate reaches out for something or stretches and has a moment of panic over whether the marks around his wrists are going to be visible.

 

Gary throws his arm around Nate’s shoulders, giddy about being off until New Year unless something comes up, his fingers barely touching the bite mark, and Nate almost jumps out of his skin.

 

Thankfully, Gary misses it, too distracted by Mona heading by with a pile of gifts for the fugitives downstairs. He races off to help while Nate tries to shake the irrational fear that someone knows. They don’t, he’s sure of it. There’s no way they can know. The clinic was on the other side of the city, he didn’t even use his own name or information, and Gary’s already mentioned that he left the Christmas party with the guy Nate encouraged him to talk to.

 

Ava frowns at Nate over a small stack of wrapped gifts for Sara. More than small, really. Medium, bordering on large, since she’s having some real difficulty seeing over them.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Nate distracts himself by fixing the bow that’s taped to the parcel on the top. “I just had a few too many last night.”

 

It’s not a lie. Not really. One of the few things coming back to him is that he drank a lot. More than a lot. Shots between phone calls. And maybe a desperate part of Nate keeps trying to clutch at that as some kind of justification, and explanation for what happened. An excuse that says that maybe it wasn’t as bad as Nate thinks it was (the pain reminds him that’s a lie) or that maybe there were just some wired crossed somewhere, a consequence of being too drunk and starting to sober up.

 

Ava grimaces. “Maybe the cocktail set was a bad idea for a gift, but her birthday is on Christmas Day and I didn’t want it to look like I was getting her half as many presents. When she called me this morning, I almost cried when I realized it was my phone ringing and not the smoke alarm.”

 

Nate forces a laugh, thinking about painkillers and the doctor at the clinic, who hadn’t looked like he believed Nate’s story about he and a hook-up accidentally getting a bit rough at all, and says, “Tell me about it. I think I drank half the bar.”

 

“Oh, you look like you did.” She jerks her head at him. “How did you get that bruise anyway?”

 

“That?” Nate touches his fingers to the bruise on his jaw. It doesn’t look like it came from someone’s hand, thankfully. “I tripped when I was drunk, ended up faceplanting on the stairs. I bit my lip, too.”

 

It almost scares him how easily the lie comes.

 

-

 

The lies get even easier.

 

Nate’s not entirely sure how he manages to avoid having to go to his parents’ house for the holidays. He thinks that what finally puts Hank off is when he says that he promised to spend it with the Legends, but that he can explain to his mom why he can’t make it if Hank wants him to. He probably did the math and realized that if Nate did that, he’d end up with the entire team at the house for the holidays, and he doesn’t want that to _ever_ happen, especially not when other people might see them if they drop by with bottles of expensive alcohol or gifts.

 

His mom shows up late on Christmas Eve and hugs him, casting a questioning look at the blankets piled on the couch, but she buys Nate’s lie that he’s busy with work and that the couch is closer to his books.

 

He ends up back on the Waverider on Christmas Day, which is somehow far more comforting to him than his apartment or the Time Bureau is. It’s usually crowded – Sara and Mick and Ray and Zari and Charlie are there, of course, but Wally and Jax are both visiting, and even two people Nate’s never met before have shown up (he doesn’t catch their names but he hears Mick wonder if Gideon’s going to make them all a chicken dinner instead of turkey.)

 

Nate slips away from Sara and Ray (narrowly avoiding a hug) as quickly as he can after Ray asks how he’s feeling and Sara chimes in with a comment about him looking tired and a question about whether Ava’s overworking him – Ava makes an indignant sound, and Nate’s glad to avoid the ensuing bickering. He narrowly avoids Charlie, who doesn’t seem to be able to decide if she’s more interested in the alcohol or the people, to sneak into one of the corners beside Mick.

 

He only has a few seconds of peace before Mick lowers his bottle.

 

“What’s up?” he asks, and Nate almost gets up and walks away again.

 

“Nothing.” _Everything_. Nate picks up one of the unopened bottles and flicks the cap off. It lands somewhere to his left with a loud clinking that he can hear even over the buzz of the conversation. The woman whose name he doesn’t know glances over at him. “I wish people would stop asking me that.”

 

“I wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t look like this was the worst day of your life.”

 

It’s not the worst. That, Nate thinks, was the day after the stupid Christmas party, when he woke up. Then it’s a blur of all the Christmases and New Years that he spent in the hospital as a kid. _Then_ it’s this stupid party. He doesn’t feel like himself. He doesn’t even feel like someone else. Just… like he’s watching his life from the outside. He can see Charlie trying to teach Ray to make cocktails, and Nate knows that he should go over with a smart comment and make sure that Ray doesn’t drop a bottle, but he simply doesn’t want to. He’s not sure what his drive was, but it’s sure as hell gone now.

 

The bottle that Ray’s holding falls and smashes. Nate flinches, suddenly thinking of a bottle sliding off the edge of a table as he stumbles (someone catches him; he’s not sure if he knows them) and tries to cover it by finishing off his beer.

 

He turns to ask Mick if he has anymore beer hidden around here, or if Nate’s going to have to brave everyone else to try and find another bottle, and Mick’s staring right at him. It’s the look that Nate associates with Mick knowing more than he lets on. Nate’s only ever seen Mick aiming it at other people and being on the receiving end doesn’t feel good at all. He suddenly feels exposed, like Mick knows exactly what happened after the Time Bureau’s Christmas party.

 

He doesn’t give Mick a chance to say anything before he’s up and crashing into Charlie, who’s heading for Mick. She almost loses her bottle: it’s only saved by Mick just managing to grab it by the neck.

 

“I thought you were one of the nice ones,” Charlie huffs, but she frowns when she looks at his face. “What’s-“

 

Nate pushes past her before she can finish that question, before she can ask what’s wrong and if he’s okay because he doesn’t want to hear it again, but he’s only halfway across the room when Sara catches his arm.

 

“Nate, finally! This is Kendra Saunders and this is Carter Hall – well, sort of, it’s a long story, but they used to be members of the team when we first started out.” Sara beams, obviously expecting Nate to do… something.

 

He should know what to do. This is part of Nate’s wheelhouse. He’s great at meeting people, great at schmoozing and making friends and everything else that Ava’s been throwing at him since he joined the Time Bureau. Except now that it feels like there’s some kind of block in his mind.

 

“Sorry,” Nate manages as he quickly backs away from the group and towards the door, fumbling for his time courier. “I need to get back: I’ve got a lot to do tonight.”

 

“He’s usually a lot friendlier,” he hears Sara say, sounding confused as he enters the information to take him to his apartment and opens a portal. “Ava said he was acting weird earlier, but I told her he’d be fine once he was around the team.”

 

“Well, at least now I know why he went and sat with you, Rory,” the woman (Kendra) says as he steps through, and the time courier’s portal closes behind Nate before he can hear anything else.

 

Nate stands in the hallway for five minutes, listening to himself breathe, listening to his heart pounding, before he heads for the couch.

 

-

 

Nate’s never liked New Year. It’s never been a sign of something starting for him, just something ending. This one? This one’s the worst yet. He’s hiding out somewhere on the ground floor of the Bureau, trying not to look like he’s avoiding any of his friends. He’s probably failing, judging from the way that he keeps having to duck into the stairwell or offices to keep avoiding them.

 

Ray’s easy to avoid. He’s downstairs with Nora, sharing champagne in plastic cups, at least according to the message that Mona sent Nate. Sara and Ava are having a romantic evening on the rooftop, so they’re also out of the way. Zari’s found the snacks, but she keeps wandering around the building, looking for Nate. John and Charlie are drunk, and Nate isn’t sure if they’re looking for him because Charlie’s worried about him or because she wants to annoy him. He hopes it’s the latter. Nate hasn’t seen Mick all night, which isn’t that unusual because Mick usually stays close to the alcohol and/or the food.

 

Nate’s just left his latest hiding place – an office that he thinks was a storage closet at one point – and is thinking about trying to see if he can get a drink when he hears footsteps behind him.

 

“Fancy seeing you here.”

 

Cold horror runs right down his spine at the sound of that voice. Nate holds on to his glass as tightly as he can without breaking it as he turns around.

 

It’s him. And the worst thing is that seeing his face (completely unremarkable, short black hair and green eyes) suddenly throws a lot of those blurry, half-remembered images from the party into a bright light that makes them nauseating.

 

“I’m Robin,” he says, holding out his hand. “We met at the Christmas party.”

 

Nate stares at it before looking back to Robin’s face. He can’t read that expression. It could be smugness because he knows that Nate recognizes him but can’t do anything about it, or it could be confusion because Robin doesn’t expect Nate to recognize him.

 

He remembers Robin ordering drinks, he remembers drinking them while he complained about how much everything sucked, he remembers Robin trying to talk him out of calling Mick and then Ava. Nate remembers Robin’s hand on his arm, too firm for him to have really been drinking from all those glasses, half-guiding and half-pushing him out to the street.

 

Nate’s sheets, stuffed in the laundry hamper since the morning after the party, in a bedroom that Nate hasn’t slept in since he woke up that morning, still reek of his cheap cologne.

 

“I have to go,” Nate says, pushing his glass into Robin’s offered hand and shoving past him, too fast for Robin to do anything other than make an indignant sound.

 

Nate has no idea whether Robin’s following him as he makes his way down the hall and to the main party, where people are watching celebrations around the country on some of the monitors that they usually use to keep an eye on the timeline. Nate dodges a rowdy group that he trained before they have time to even really notice it’s him, and he’s so busy checking over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Robin, that he doesn’t even realize that he’s reached the open bar until he collides painfully with someone.

 

The glass breaks as it hits the floor, but the music and conversation are both too loud for anyone to hear. Mick frowns at the mess.

 

“You owe me a drink, Pretty,” he says, but his expression changes as he catches sight of the look on Nate’s face. “Nate?”

 

Nate glances over his shoulder again, catching sight of Robin in the hallway, stuck behind Nate’s old trainee group, and the only thing he can think of is, “Do you want to get out of here?”

 

There’s no response, just that _look_ that Mick got that day on the Waverider, but now it’s directed right at Robin.

 

“ _Mick_. We can steal a car again, rob someone, rob a _bank_ , just do anything that’s not here.” Nate’s voice cracks as he adds a, “Please,” on to the end.

 

He’s not sure what he’s going to do if Mick refuses. There isn’t another option that Nate can see that doesn’t include every single person he knows finding out what happened.

 

Mick pulls out a time courier that he probably stole from some poor idiot who hasn’t had the lecture about keeping an eye on them around Legends, and Nate breathes a sigh of relief when he doesn’t ask any questions, just lets Nate grab his arm and push him towards the door on the other side of the room.

 

He doesn’t care where they’re going when Mick opens the portal.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the following prompt.
> 
> S4 working-at-Time-Bureau Nate gets raped while wasted, is messed up about it. H/c is awesome. Friendship is great, background ships are also great. If foreground ships are where this takes you too, by all means, let it. Also go as non-graphic or graphic as you want on the actual non-con. Diverge from canon as-needed.


End file.
